Saturday, November 14, 2009

A New Week...A New Internship...

So this week has been an awfully busy week considoring my severe lack of paid work. Having completed my time at the charity last week I was left with nothing to do. However, with the optimistic idea that 'experience on the cv will lead to a job' in my mind I decided to hunt for something to do. I have recently decided that PR isn't fulfilling me enough...by this I mean it is not fully-filling my wallet...in fact traveling to my many unpaid work placements is actually emptying it. I have decided that I need to add a political atmosphere to my 'slave labour'. Lets face it, if your going to be working for free you might as well be trying to do something you care about. That was my problem with unpaid internships at Consumer PR agencies...I just struggle to care about the fact that I managed to get an upcoming blockbuster film a spread in a newspaper. It hasn't changed the world in any way what-so-ever. So I decided that Politics would instil this passion in me. I applied to many roles on www.w4mp.org these roles ranged from public affairs consultancies, to joining campaign teams, and finally I decided to be a three month intern at a charitable think tank. I am hoping in this role I can do some good. So far...not so much luck. I started on Thursday. My lack of a political partisan view meant that I really didn't care enough to go out handing out fliers to people on the street saying "Vote for John Smith", when really people would much rather 'Vote for John and Edward' and to be honest at times so would I.

So I went for the Think Tank. This role seems like there might be some opportunity. It is a small organisation, I am 1 of 4 people. Which to me suggests that I am actually covering roles they can't afford to pay people for. Again, I am doing a job that some one else is probably being paid for. Actually, I say probably...I mean definitely, the women I am working directly with is doing exactly the same as me. We are doing the same work with the same responsibility. Difference is...she gets paid! As you can tell I am not a happy bunny. Made less happy by the fact that I am almost definitely better than her at it. Considering she did exactly the same project last year you would have thought she would be able to do it in her sleep. But apparently not. To be fair, she can do the job. It is not that I am better than her...it's more that she is worse than me. We have been given a spreadsheet of contact details that we have to work down in order to book people for our upcoming event. As we go down the spreadsheet we are colour coding it. This makes sense, it allows us to see what we have done already so we don't over-lap ourselves. However, problems arose when it turned out that the Manchester Office (we are based in London) has already done some of it and had started the colour coding. Now for me the obvious colours that you code anything with are Red, Green and Orange - stop, start and pending. The Manchester office did not use these...but thats fine we can use their codes - or so I thought. The girl I work with decided this was not fine with her. She wanted to change the coding. I also don't have a problem with this, as long as we all understand the coding their is no problem. Especially if she had have changed it to red, green and orange. However she didn't. Upon my inspection I had to query something, "There are two blues here?" Why would there be two different kind of blues...how could this be helpful...to be fair, maybe she had just clicked the wrong shade of blue, it happens...nope. "Yeah, I didn't like their blue so I chose a prettier one." A Prettier one? what!? Who cares if it is pretty it is a spreadsheet...but thats fine, surely they mean the same thing...right? "Oh but they mean the same?" Surely they did, you'd have to be a fool to use two different blues to mean two different things on the same spreadsheet. "No...the periwinkle blue is for people we have rang, the other blue is for those that need phoning." Now not only did she just say the term 'periwinkle blue' with no reference to Snatch at all...in fact I have reason to believe she has never even seen Snatch (the posh bitch)...but I in all honestly did not know which one was periwinkle blue, and nor could I care. All I knew that this was no longer colour coding, this was just colouring in. I don't mind working for free if it is going to help me (though it is starting to get on my tits), and I don't mind doing hard work for free, if it's going to help me (though it is starting to get on my tits), but I have a serious problem with people making my work harder than it should be when they're being paid and I am not (that is seriously already on my tits!). My only response was that I would not be touching any that are coloured blue, she can deal with them. They are no longer my problem. I have brushed my hands clean of the blues!

I do not know how I am going to last the next three months. Not being funny I have so little in common with these people. I know I am about as middle-class as they come, but come on...these people are beyond posh. They think risque humour is mocking David Dimblebey being hit by a bullock. If I happen to make a joke that might reference say the holocaust, old man senility or even a jovial reference to the act of intimacy that is making love. They do not laugh. They do not join in. They don't even cringe. They feel sorry for the butt of the joke. Who has that reaction? It's a joke...laugh, be shocked...do something! If things carry on as they are I don't know what I am going to die of first...poverty or boredom!

1 comment:

Just read your blog so far - I'm in a fairly similar situation to you - in fact, I just graduated a few months ago - but I can't even find an internship! I was reluctant to get a non-graduate job, trying to stay optimistic, but desperation and lack of beer tokens forced me, so I applied to several high street places - Boots, Next, etc. Got rejected even though they had vacancies. 2:1 in English lit and I'm not even allowed to be a till monkey...

The whole internship phenomenon is ridiculous, and I know this, but I still want one, as it's presented (and indeed, probably is) one of the only feasible ways into many industries.

As you pointed out though, we're still comparitively lucky - parents to support us, in/near London, etc. If I had paid my entire way through uni with no support at all, then was expected to work for free, I think I'd sit down and cry. And then dumb down my CV and hand in a job application for street cleaning.